Coalition Letter to Senate regarding "Creation Science" Earmark

We, the undersigned
religious, civil rights, education, science, and advocacy organizations write to
urge you to remove an earmark from the Fiscal Year 2008 Departments of Labor,
Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriation
Bill’s Committee Report. The Fund
for Improvement of Education, under Title III, contains an earmark for uses
that, if funded, would be blatantly unconstitutional. The earmark would fund curriculum that
promotes teaching creationism in the science classroom, even though uniformly
prohibited by federal courts.

The requested funding
would go to the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF) “to develop a plan to promote
better science education.”
According to The New Orleans
Times-Picayune, the earmark “will pay for a report suggesting ‘improvements’
in science education in Louisiana, the development and distribution of
educational materials and an evaluation of the effectiveness of the Ouachita
Parish [Louisiana] School Board’s 2006 [science
curriculum] policy.”[1]

The Louisiana Family
Forum’s mission is to “persuasively present biblical principles in centers of
influence,” including schools.[2] One way the LFF seeks to accomplish its
mission is by advocating for teaching creationism in the science classroom. For instance, the LFF played a leading
role last year in Ouachita
Parish, Louisiana School
Board’s adoption of a “science curriculum policy”[3]
that “opened the door to biblically inspired teachings in science class.”[4] The policy uses a creationist ploy —
“teaching the controversy” — that allows teachers to point out the alleged
“weaknesses” of evolutionary theory.
This is despite the fact that courts have consistently held this tactic
to be unconstitutional and that “the scientific consensus around evolution is
overwhelming.”[5]
Constitutional and scientific
issues aside, underwriting LFF’s study of this questionable “science curriculum
policy” for which it has already been a vigorous advocate is a dubious use of
federal funding, to say the least.

Another LFF strategy in
its quest to bring creationism to science class is promoting creationist
“addenda” (deceptively called “evolution addenda”) that public-school teachers
can use to supplement state-approved science textbooks. One such addendum, published by the LFF
as a “Fact Sheet,” promotes discredited arguments from both the young-earth and
intelligent-design creationist movements.[6]
Among other constitutional
problems, the addendum substitutes biblical explanations for scientific ones by
attributing the “billions of fossils” on Earth to “violent floods in the past”
and by questioning whether chemical origins of life happened “accidentally” or
“by purely natural processes.” Moreover, alluding to supernatural
explanations undermines modern scientific methodology, in which scientists seek
natural rather than supernatural explanations.[7]

This addendum was written
by Dr. Charles H. Voss, a retired electrical engineering professor and close
ally of the LFF. Voss is also vice
president of the young-earth creationist Origins Resource Association (ORA),
which is devoted to bringing creationism into science classes.[8] Voss has written similar, equally
problematic, addenda for Louisiana’s state-approved biology textbooks.
They are available at his website,
TextAddOns.com, to which the LFF posts a link. He authored an ORA “pamphlet outlining
Scriptural and scientific arguments showing that God did NOT use evolution as
His method of creating.”[9] His addenda are clearly among the
“improvements” in science education and “educational materials” for which the
LFF advocates — and for which the U.S. Constitution forbids taxpayer funds to be
spent. There is no doubt that the
LFF’s intent is to bring creationism into science classrooms with federal
taxpayer dollars.

The federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have
consistently and repeatedly held that creationism in all its variations
(“creation science,” “young-earth creationism,” “intelligent design,” and other
anti-evolution doctrines) cannot be taught in the public schools. In Epperson v. Arkansas,[10]
the Supreme Court struck down a state statute prohibiting the teaching of
evolution in public schools, explaining that “the First Amendment does not
permit the State to require that teaching and learning must be tailored to the
principles or prohibitions of any [religion].”[11] Subsequently, in Edwards v.
Aguillard,[12]
the Supreme Court invalidated a Louisiana statute requiring the “balanced
treatment” of evolution and “creation science” in the public schools. The Court declared the law
unconstitutional because its “preeminent purpose . . . was clearly to advance
the religious viewpoint that a supernatural being created humankind.”[13]

Other courts have similarly invalidated public schools’
attempts to teach thinly disguised religious beliefs regarding the origins of
life.[14] Most recently, the court in Kitzmiller v. Dover, joined by local,
national, and international media, recognized that the school board in Dover disserved the
students, parents, and teachers in the community by dragging them into a “legal
maelstrom, with its utter waste of monetary and personal resources.”[15]

Federal funding of the
LFF’s efforts to introduce creationism in public-school science classrooms will
similarly harm the religious liberty of students and their families. As the Supreme Court has explained, the
“preservation and transmission of religious beliefs and worship is a
responsibility and a choice committed to the private sphere,” for “religious
beliefs and religious expression are too precious to be either proscribed or
prescribed by the State.”[16] Parents — not schools — have the right
to direct the religious upbringing of their children. Our nation is becoming more and more
religiously diverse and Louisiana’s students and their families
reflect this diversity. One
specific religion’s view of the origins of life should not be taught to the
exclusion of others. Doing so sends
the message to those who disagree “‘that they are
outsiders, not full members of the [school] community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they
are insiders, favored members of the [school] community.’”[17]

Finally, federal funding
of the LFF will weaken rather than strengthen science education. “Creationism, intelligent design, and
other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of species
are not science because they are not testable by the methods of science.”[18] Including these religious ideas in
science classes “compromises the objectives of public education”[19]
and negatively affects students.
Teaching creationism “threaten[s] . . . students’ understanding of the
biological, physical, and geological sciences” and “deprive[s] students of the
education they need to be informed and productive citizens in an increasingly
technological, global community.”[20] The scientific literacy of students is
at risk, which in turn puts our nation’s competitiveness and ability to continue
to achieve major advances in technology and public health at risk.

Not only would granting
federal funding for the LFF’s program be unconstitutional, it also would be bad
policy that would infringe upon students’ religious freedom and undermine their
education in the important discipline of science.

We urge you to remove
this harmful and unconstitutional earmark.

Sincerely,

American Association of
School AdministratorsAmerican Association of
University WomenAmerican Civil Liberties
UnionAmerican Humanist
AssociationAmerican Institute of
Biological SciencesAmerican Jewish
CommitteeAmerican Jewish
CongressAmericans for Religious
LibertyAmericans United for
Separation of Church and StateAnti-Defamation
LeagueBaptist Joint Committee
for Religious LibertyBiological Sciences
Curriculum StudyCenter for InquiryColorado Evolution
Response TeamDisciples Justice Action
NetworkEqual Partners in
FaithJewish Council for Public
AffairsKansas Citizens for
ScienceNational Center for Science EducationNational Council of
Jewish WomenNational Education
AssociationNational Science Teachers
AssociationOklahomans for Excellence
in Science EducationOrganization of
Biological Field StationsProtestant Justice
ActionSecular Coalition for
AmericaSikh Council on Religion
and EducationSociety for the Study of
EvolutionTexas Faith NetworkTexas Freedom NetworkThe Interfaith AllianceUnion for Reform JudaismUnitarian Universalist
Association of CongregationsWomen of Reform
Judaism